NEWS & VIEWS for Hants Border, Hantsport, and beyond. : More about that electric motorcycle

from the Chronicle Herald Jan. 19

SHUBENACADIE — Michael Uhlarik hopes to put Nova Scotia on the map
in the electric motorcycle industry.

Originally from Sudbury, Ont. Michael is an industrial designer who specializes in
creating style and function. After working with Piaggio, Yamaha, and Bombardier,
Michael moved to Halifax last year with his wife Michelle, who is originally from
New Brunswick.

Since 2010, Michael has been working to develop his prototype electric racing

motorcycle, the Amarok P1. In 2007, he went to a motorcycle show in Milan,

where he saw a modern electric scooter produced by a U.S. company. He

wasn’t impress with the design, but the idea of the electric motor intrigued him.

“An electric motor has one moving part, and after a hundred years of developing gasoline bikes and making them pretty perfect, as a designer, the challenge is not that great anymore,” Michael told me. “What we’re doing now is perfecting 1/10th of a per cent. You kill yourself to shave a kilogram of weight or find a little extra performance.”

When he looked at the electric scooter, stripped down at the show, he saw that it was a designer’s dream and a blank canvas to develop something truly special.

The idea came and went for years, but Michael decided to pursue it after leaving Bombardier. He built a demonstrator mock-up in full scale and enlisted the help of his friend and neighbour in Quebec, Kevin O’Neil, a mechanic and machinist.

With significant buzz in the auto industry about electric vehicles, as well as the dawn of electric bike racing, this was the perfect time. Two years later, Michael and Kevin have completed their prototype, the Amarok P1, a unique, lightweight electric motorcycle, built in Canada for the racetrack.

“The first goal is to make it recognizable as a sport motorcycle and to just make a great motorcycle, irrelevant whether it’s powered by gasoline, electricity, or gerbils turning a wheel, it has to be a great bike to ride. It has to be fun, it has to handle,” Michael explained.

“The big feeling of electric bikes mostly until now is that they’ve been focusing on trying to be eco and green, and that’s wonderful, but if people aren’t turned on and don’t want to ride it, they’re never going to go for it.”

The Amarok P1 is a small, light, and beautiful motorcycle with great racing potential. This hand-built bike tips the scales at just over 325 lbs, much less than its gasoline-powered counterparts, and features 80hp produced by the electric motor.

Run time in full race conditions is approximately 45 minutes, but in testing, the P1 lasted over four hours, using only $0.50 of electricity. Recharge time is one hour and the goal for the next generation of prototype is to decrease the weight by more than 25 lbs and increase the battery capacity by 30 per cent.

Local 2012 Amateur Sport Bike and Superbike champion and rising star Austin Shaw-O’Leary was on hand at Atlantic Motorsport Park to put the bike through its paces and do the first round of real-world testing.

“It was definitely different, it was fun to ride,” Austin told me. “Compared to the 600 that I ride now, when you got on the brakes, you could hear the brake pads against the rotors as you slowed down. You could hear the tires on the pavement.”

Indeed the haunting quiet howl of the electric motor was a strange sound at AMP.

Austin told me that the P1 definitely took some getting used to, with stiff front suspension and the lack of engine braking from the electric motor. Once he was used to it though, he enjoyed riding it.

“I could see this becoming a popular thing at Shubie. If there’re four or five of them out there, you might actually see a class of them. It was a great bike to ride and I had a lot of fun riding it. I would try it again.”

The development of this bike is on trend with the birth and evolution of electric motorcycle racing worldwide. This revolution started in 2009 at the Isle of Mann, and has developed the performance and efficiency of the bikes more in three years than gasoline-powered motorcycles did in 65 years of racing.

Currently, the TTXGP electric motorcycle racing series is running in the U.S., and that’s where Michael is heading next with his bike for six events in the 2013 season. While the Amarok has significantly less power than the other bikes in the series, it is hundreds of pounds lighter.

“My aspiration is for someone like Austin to carve up one of the big, powerful American bikes on the inside of a tight corner,” Michael smiled. “I don’t care if we can’t keep our own on the straight, I want to own the corners, and I really believe that our package is on the way to doing that.”

The ultimate dream is for Amarok to manufacture these beautiful hand-built machines right here in Nova Scotia.

“I would love to have a factory in a place like Lunenburg or Wolfville — a smaller community that has an interesting mix of craftsmanship. Producing fine food, distilleries, or fine wines — that’s as much a craftsmanship thing as we’re doing with aluminum and rivets,” Michael shared.

“I think that’s our strength. We’re not going to be gigantic. We’re not going to take on Honda. But I do think we can create a boutique product that’s known for excellence. This is really a place where I think the quality of people is good enough to be able to produce a world-leading product.”